Say Goodnight
by AnotherChapterOfMe
Summary: Set after Regionals, season 1. AU. Quinn was in a bad car accident on her way to the hospital. What happens to her and Beth? And how will Puck deal with it?


** A/N: This is a sad story. Tissues may be necessary. The song is _Say Goodnight _by Bullet For My Valentine.**

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><p>If I'd known what would have happened that night after Regionals, I wouldn't have stepped on the bus – and sure as hell wouldn't have let <em>you <em>step on it, Quinnie. The night started out amazing; we sang so well, we had so much fun… Up on the stage, I was looking at you.

You're usually such a together person. Fierce, I think that's the word. A pregnant teen who got kicked out of her house and out of the Cheerios, but still had a defying look in her face every single day, as if you were saying to the world… "Is that all you got for me? Then bring it on, 'cause I can take a lot more, bitch". Yeah, that's the definition.

Yet, when you were up there singing and dancing, you were just a little girl having fun, with that pretty smile and that round, bulging stomach that looked obviously out of place in someone so young and innocent-looking.

We hopped out of the stage and down the stairs, and you held onto Beth in your stomach as you walked. I saw you talk to your mother, and the next thing we knew was that you were climbing into the car with Mrs. Fabray and I was yanked away from you by an impatient Mr. Schue, who led us all into the bus as quick as he could to take us to the hospital.

It all happened so fast afterwards. I can't even remember all of it, yet there are some details still so vivid in my mind, it seems like no time has passed. I'm sorry, Quinn, I know you never had much patience for clichés. But it's hard to describe what I felt after we got off the bus and didn't see your car anywhere, and the panic started to sink into me like a knife.

Something was very wrong, and not just the fact that you – _you and my baby – _weren't there. A feeling I had that told me nothing was going to be right for a long time.

It seemed like hours before they came rushing in, wheeling a stretcher with a blonde mess on it. Your beautiful, white, perfect face was stained with blood, and a few pieces of glass could still be seen in the red puddle on the top of your head.

It couldn't be my Quinn.

Beneath the sheet that covered your barely-breathing figure, a bump was very visible. _My Beth. _No, this wasn't happening – it couldn't. What had happened to the car? Baby, what did your mother do to you? I still don't know the answer exactly. All I know is that I followed the paramedics into the aisle, trying to get some information – anything – and winding up smashing a frustrated fist against the wall when one of them shoved me aside and they all disappeared with you somewhere.

I remember the agonizing wait. Everyone had seen the state you were in, and nobody had any idea what to do; Santana paced around the room like a maniac, Finn was crying into Kurt's shoulder, Artie was so still he looked like a wheelchair-bound statue, and everybody else was just scattered around, hurt and confused and worried. Mercedes had her hands joined and her head bowed, praying for you, for Beth, for everything to get better, or maybe for us to wake up.

My chest was tight and my throat seemed to have shut completely. I wanted to break something, anything, just… I couldn't sit still… My mind could only come up with one coherent thought. _I need to see Quinn and Beth. Right. Fucking. Now._

It was an eternity before a tall, bald doctor came to tell us what had happened.

"Noah Puckerman? I understand you are the father of the child."

I quit pacing immediately and stood before him, too scared to even say anything. What if you hadn't made it, Quinn? What would I do?

"Quinn was in a very bad car accident, son. Her mother's car crashed into a house while trying to get away from what we assume was a drunk driver. Mrs. Fabray, I'm sorry to announce, passed away instantly. Quinn called the ambulance and was still conscious when we got to her; however, she was – is – in a very bad state. The front window shattered, so the glass got everywhere."

Very bad state.

The window shattered.

Car crash.

HOLY SHIT. At that moment, all I wanted to do was punch the living daylights out of that doctor. Rationally, I knew it wasn't his fault, but how dare he say it all in such a matter-of-factly way? You weren't just another patient. You were Quinn Fabray, _my_ Quinn, the mother of my baby girl.

I needed to do something, anything, to ease the gnawing pain in my chest.

"What about my baby?" I asked, my voice unrecognizable. I was surprised to even be able to produce any sound at all through the huge lump that had settled in my throat.

"We were able to get her out just fine, Mr. Puckerman; she is a very healthy girl. We've put her in the incubator for now, but you'll be able to see her tomorrow."

At least Beth was fine.

But you weren't.

"What's Quinn's situation, specifically?"

"We were able to stabilize her vitals, but she is unconscious and very badly wounded from the impact and the glass. One particularly nasty piece of the window perforated an artery, so she lost a lot of blood, and we're afraid there might be brain damage."

Brain damage.

I couldn't even process the words. Actually, there's a whole chunk of that night I completely erased from my mind, and the time from that conversation to when the doctor escorted me to your room is something I have no recollection of.

I remember what it was like to finally see you, lying there, so defenseless, in that crappy hospital bed. You looked small, fragile, broken; there were bandages on your head and visible red cuts on your beautiful face. On your chest. A bandage covering what could only be a big gash where your neck met your shoulder. One arm broken, the other also covered in cuts.

You looked like a fallen angel, and again, I'm sorry about the cliché, but there is no expression that fits better.

I approached the bed and sat on the chair by your side, grasping your unbroken hand in mine as gently as I could. I reached for your wrist with trembling fingers and the only consolation I could find was your pulse, steady and rhythmic, the only sign that you weren't lost. Right beneath my hand.

Even when the doctor asked me to step away, I couldn't let go. Saying goodbye to you, even if it was temporarily, was something I couldn't stand. I remember just staying there and crying over my Quinn, whose brain had been damaged, whose beautiful eyes were closed not in sleep, but in a coma.

Even then I knew I'd miss you every day in my life.

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><p><em>Heaven's waiting for you<em>

_Just close your eyes_

_And say goodbye_

_Hearing your pulse_

_Go on and on and on..._

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><p>The next morning, I was able to hold our baby. She had your eyes, Quinn, your blue eyes staring into mine with the same fierce intensity. And she was – is – beautiful, like you. Beth held out her little hand and looked at me for the longest time, as if she was asking me if I was really going to tell the doctors to give her up for adoption when her mommy was already broken and she needed her daddy so bad.<p>

Screw the future, then. If my future couldn't include my daughter, it was probably not worth having anyway. Besides… She was a piece of you that I could hold to me and take care of. I think that's mostly why I looked at those doctors and said I was keeping her, and _would you stop referring to her as "the baby"; her name is Elizabeth Fabray-Puckerman. _You'd be all smug that your name goes first; everybody would call her Beth Fabray and you would smile your pretty smile, looking proudly at that little thing, like I do most of the time.

I was pretty much forced to go home that night by Finn, who had also not left the hospital ever since you came in on the stretcher. Said he'd stay with you for the night and that I could come back in the morning, but I needed some sleep and a shower and some peace of mind for a few hours.

Took him a lot of convincing, but I went.

I'm sorry.

I showered and took some pills to make me sleep, at least a little. And I did – and after maybe a couple hours of deep, chemically induced, dreamless sleep, the nightmares came. You. In the car. Glass, so much glass, shattering and hitting your previously immaculate face from all possible directions. Beth. In my dream, she was hurt too.

I woke up gasping, breathless, crying, I'm not really sure what I was doing, but it sure as hell didn't feel good. I knew I had to go to the hospital immediately. Screw the night. I'd probably not get any decent sleep anyway.

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><p><em>I live my life in misery<em>

_I sacrificed this world to hold you_

_No breath left inside of me_

_Shattered glass keeps falling..._

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><p>When I arrived, Finn was in the waiting room, crying his damn eyes out. Oh, I had a bad, bad feeling about this. He wasn't in your room, which means he wasn't by your side, which means – knowing Finn – he probably didn't have to be. This could only mean one thing.<p>

Oh, no.

_Oh, no_.

"Oh, no." I apparently said this out loud, which made him snap up and look at me through bloodshot eyes. I just knew what it was. His expression made it pretty fucking clear.

"I'm so sorry", he said, in a voice that was barely there, as he rose from the chair and came over to me. I couldn't do anything else but hug him back as tight as I could, and we stayed there, crying together for the woman of both our lives.

I'm sorry I left that night, Quinn.

I should have been there for you.

"Did you… Were you with her when…?"

I had to know. Finn broke our embrace and wiped his eyes with his sleeve before answering in a shaky voice:

"She asked about you. Told you to t-take good care of B… B… B…" And he broke into sobs again, and I couldn't help but join in – and assume he meant Beth. Oh, believe me, baby, I've been doing my absolute best to achieve just that.

I wish I'd been able to say goodbye to you. Later that night, Finn told me you had looked so unbelievably peaceful when it happened. Like you were just sleeping. Cut up and broken, but sleeping.

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><p><em>Say...<em>

_Say goodnight_

_Just sleep tight_

_Say goodnight..._

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><p>Your funeral was the most surreal thing I have ever witnessed, Quinn. It was just one of those things where you just think <em>this can't be fucking happening<em>. I left Beth at home with my parents that day, which was already strange because, since you died, it was the first time she wasn't with me.

There were flowers _everywhere_. It was an unusually sunny day, and everything was so colorful and bright and weird and empty because you weren't there, you would never be there, and the fact that there was still something beautiful in my life – other than my daughter – was completely inconceivable to me at that moment. There was _too much_ color on a day when all the color in my life was being lowered into a hole in the ground.

I didn't stay for long. It was just too much, it made me dizzy – still does – to even think about the whole thing. I couldn't stop crying, and neither could pretty much any of our Glee friends. You were so loved, baby, so loved by everyone. It doesn't make sense that you're gone.

The Glee girls all took turns helping me look after Beth for the first months. Britt and Santana were amazing at it, by the way. When they get their own kids, they're going to be fantastic mothers. Rachel wasn't too bad either; we sang a kickass lullaby. Mercedes seemed surprisingly uncomfortable, though she did a good job too. And as we all would have expected, Kurt volunteered to babysit too, which he was pretty damn good at.

But none of them, none of them compared to you. It should have been us putting Beth to sleep, and playing with her, and feeding her, and doing all of that parent stuff that I still have yet to figure out completely. I should be able to help you take care of our kid, and then, after she was finally asleep in her little crib, take you to bed and just hold you until we fell asleep seconds later.

She looks like both of us, you know. Actually, scratch that. Except for the brown hair, my nose and the slightly badass attitude, she looks _exactly_ like you. And she is so beautiful, and so smart, you would be really proud.

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><p><em>Flowers laid out for you<em>

_So many colors leave me blind_

_Seeing your face reflect from our baby's eyes..._

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><p>Today is her fifth birthday. It's been exactly five years that she came into my life and exactly five years since you left us both here, still at my parents' place, still trying to figure out what the hell to do about our lives. Five years, Quinn. And that's why I'm here, at your grave, before she wakes up at home. It's another sunny morning and it's still too colorful, still too bright, and there's still no you to come and tell me to stop being such a pussy about it.<p>

There have been other girls, but just a bunch of meaningless one-night-stands – exactly the kind of thing I used to do before you came into my life for good. It's shallow and quick and sometimes I wonder why I still do it, but the truth is I haven't found another you yet. I don't know if I ever will.

Beth asked about you yesterday. I had just gotten her into her little green PJs – a gift from Finn – and she giggled when I picked her up to pull up her pants. Something about that laugh was so very you, I just had to comment on it before I could help myself.

"What was Mommy's name again, Daddy?" She asked. I've told her this so many times, but I think she just likes to hear the stories.

"It's Quinn. Lucy Quinn Fabray, but she didn't like Lucy."

"Why not?"

She has such a sweet look in her eyes when we start talking about you. She wishes she'd met you, you know? Actually, at random moments, we mention you and she smiles knowingly as if you were our own little secret.

"Because she used to look very different from what she thought was beautiful, and back then everybody knew her as Lucy. When she came to Lima, she was all different and blonde and had a tiny nose, and wanted to be called Quinn."

Beth tilted her head and pouted.

"You mean she had brown hair and a big nose?"

"Yes." I looked her deep in the eyes – _your_ eyes – as I said this, while holding her tiny hand in mine. "And she was the most beautiful girl I've ever met, both inside and out, just like you."

She smiled her wide, pretty smile and threw her little arms around my neck.

"Do you miss her, Daddy?"

I sighed and pulled her closer.

"Only every single day. But you're my little piece of Quinn, and you're every bit as awesome as she was."

She really is, you know. I wish you were here to see her.

But then again, if you were, things would be so different. For starters, there wouldn't be an empty spot on the bed beside me every night. Beth would have a mother to tell her a princess story before bed, instead of talking about dead people. Honestly, the girls (and Kurt) are all completely amazing and they still do so much for Beth. But none of them is you.

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><p><em>So here I am<em>

_You're inside of me_

_So here I am_

_Our world is over_

_So here I am_

_You're inside of me_

_So here I am_

_Our world is over_

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><p>I think I have to go now… I promised Kurt I'd have Beth fed, bathed and not smelling of popcorn – we may or may not have had a food fight last night while watching <em>Shrek<em> for the millionth time – before he comes to dress her up for the party. It's going to be a great one, by the way. Tinkerbell theme. You're welcome to come, you know?

Aw, who are we kidding? I know you'll come. I won't see you, and neither will Beth, but you'll be there. Because when she laughs and sings _happy birthday_ with her little friends, it's gonna be your laugh. When she falls to the ground after getting off of the slide, her lips are gonna do that cute little thing yours did before you cried. And when we gather around the cake and she blows up the five pink candles, I know exactly what she'll be wishing for.

I love you, Quinn. So, so much. I just hope that wherever you are, you know this, and maybe – just maybe – you still love me too.

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><p><em>Here I am with you<em>

_I'm there till the end_

_Memories are calling_

_So farewell my friend_

_Farewell my __friend!_

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><p><strong> AN: I have an inexplicable tendency to kill off a nice character, then write them a letter apologizing for it. Anyway. Did you like it? Did you? *squeals* Review please!**


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